Impermissible
by AndImTheQueenOfSheba
Summary: -"Stockholm Syndrome. That's what it's called. That's what you have." The stupid good-for-nothing shrink told me. "No I don't. That means I'm crazy. That means that I don't really love him. I do. I know I do."
1. Chapter 1

**_Okay, so I was just sitting here, thinking about sunburn, and how it hurts, when BAM (ow) an idea hit me. (painfully) At first, I was like, "Noo! Not another one! I'll never finish them all!" But then I spontaneously became depressed, and decided to write it. So I did. Writing it, I decided that I actually kind of liked the idea, and since, at least to me, it was turning out okay, I decided to post it. Of course, there was a TINY amount of pressuring on somebody else's part..._**

**_Anyway, without further ado, here you go. The latest story that I really did not want to write.

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I hate that clock. It ticktockticks all day, like it's _not_ keeping time in the most dreadful location on this dark and dreary Earth. I hate this place; I hate the dark walls, and the prickly carpet on the floor. I hate the depressing classical music drifting in under the door, and I hate the lack of sunlight through the too-small window. I hate it all, but most of all, I hate the clock. The clock that keeps track of the fast-moving time that slips by, between the last time I saw my family and my friends, and my imminent death.

I hate the clock, because it reminds me of my mother. My mother, who I will soon be seeing again. It reminds me of my father. My father whom I _won't _be seeing anytime soon. The one that surely misses me. It reminds me of my brother. My brother who…is my brother. The horrid clock reminds me of Lilly, and of Oliver. Of Rico, and Amber, and Ashley, and Mr. Dontzig, and Jake, and Dandruff Danny, and of the cashier at register 6 in the local grocery store. It reminds me of people that don't matter, and of people that do.

I hate the clock because it hates me too. It taunts me, up there on the wall, where nobody can reach it. Where nobody can touch it. Where it could never be harmed. It taunts me because It's undamaged, all in one piece, on the wall, while I remain down here, crumbled and shattered, waiting for the injuries I've sustained to heal while they can.

I hate the clock because it won't let me sleep. It ticks all through the night, keeping my mind awake, when my broken and useless body desperately wants to sleep. It digs up all of the thoughts in the back of my mind. All of the thoughts that I've tried so desperately not to think. It brings up old memories, and it brings up new ones. It makes me remember everything that has happened to me. It makes me remember things that I _certainly _don't want to remember.

_"Sit up, you useless whore" He yelled furiously at me, kicking me in the side, after I'd tried so many times to sit up whe he told me to. The pain I felt when his boot connected with my ribcage was like no other as of yet. I barely acknowledged it though, because I was becoming accustomed to it, and while the pain was definitely there, my mind was so numb that it wouldn't tell me what I was feeling any longer. I wish it would. When it first happened, the pain had overridden everything in my brain. It had kept what was happening outside on the outside, while the throbbing destruction of both the inside and outside of my body, stayed inside. I missed that. Now all that got inside of me was him. In more ways than one. He got inside me more often in the emotional way than the physical way, but the one that effected my mind hurt the most, even if I was used to it._

_Tonight, or this morning, I wasn't really sure what time it was - the pain had obscured my vision, and I couldn't exactly remember what the time had been the last time I'd looked - his voice, and his words, sounded weird. He'd never talked to me like that before, and I could tell from his tone of voice that he wasn't used to it. He had taken me, but deep down, he felt, at least, the smallest amount of remorse, and he didn't feel right about what he was doing. I desperately hoped that that was what his tenor meant._

_"I…Just, please, get up Miley." He then told me, his voice much less harsh, and much more apologetic. _

_I hated it when he said my name, because it made me think that he cared, and I **knew **that he didn't. He didn't care about me in the least. If he cared at all about what I thought of him, he wouldn't have me here. Wherever **here** was. I didn't understand why he would even attempt to talk to me in a way that even hinted at the possibility of compassion existing inside of him._

_I remained on the floor, staring through a gap between strands of my own matted hair, at his feet. They didn't look like the kind of feet that would hurt you. They didn't look like the kind of feet that would purposely bring harm to such a fragile creature as a human. You can't judge people by their feet though, even if they are similar. Some feet make their plans obvious. You can tell when one is going to kick you before it does. Other feet, however, are good at hiding their intentions, and therefore make being near them even worse. _

_This man, I'm not sure what his name was, is the latter pair of feet. I never knew what he was going to do, which made being around him so much worse. Waiting for him to do something, waiting for him to hurt me – It was torture. I never knew what was coming, and I hated it._

_I think I saw the next kick coming though. He was the first pair of feet for a split second, as his foot jerked, too excited to hide how badly it wanted to kick me. His foot swung at me, and the tip of his shoe connected with my jaw. I could feel it bruising, as I pushed myself up, using my scarred, busted open, palms._

_"Don't cry." He whispered, as my swollen eyes started watering from the pain. I knew he hated it when I cried, and I wanted to do it, just to make him made, but I wasn't sure how much more I could take, so I dried my tears with the grimy, ripped, sleeve of a shirt I wasn't so sure I'd arrived in. _

_I wasn't all that sure that my recollection of the day I'd been taken here was all that accurate, however. I could barely remember it. All I knew was that I'd been taken after some sort of Hannah event. Whether it be a concert, a costume fitting, or a CD signing, I wasn't sure. I could barely remember anything about the Hannah part of my previous life anymore. It completely slipped out of my mind. This was my life now._

_"Calm down and I won't hurt you. All you need to do is listen." He told me, kneeling down to be at the same level of the victim he had ruined. I knew he **would** hurt me, whether I stayed calm or not, but I did what he wanted. "That's a good girl." He whispered, patting my bruised back with the hand that had done the bruising. _

_"Now. Hannah Montana is pretty famous. Correct?" I only looked him in the eyes. He took that as a yes. "Well that means she has money, whereas I don't. Do you see what's happening now? Why I need you?" I'd suspected that money was behind my kidnapping for the long weeks that I'd been held captive, I wasn't sure why he hadn't asked me about the money yet. It'd just made the news how I'd hit the billions mark in profits. At least, I think it did._

_Hannah made **a lot **of money. The tours alone made over 20 million each, nowadays. The CDs seemed to sell three times as much as I suspected they would, and lately, I'd been expecting a lot. The book deal had been a good one, even if a HUGE part of my life - the real part - was missing from it. The movies I seemed to keep getting roped into, the dolls, the pillows, the shoes, the clothes, it was all part of an empire. A gigantic empire. I'd planned to sing, and never to do much else than that, but with fame comes many very convincing people that won't stop pressuring you until you do something. It's sort of like high school, only they do it in a more mature way, and they have **much** more money. _

_"My family has never had much. My parents were **never **proud of me. I'd never achieved anything, I'd never helped the family the way my older sister did. She's a bank teller now. She bought them a new house. The most I've ever bought my parents is a hamburger off the dollar menu. Now you can see what that can do to a guy's self-esteem, can you not?"_

_I couldn't exactly see what his problem was. He couldn't much more than five years older than me. 23 at the most. He hadn't exactly had a chance to achieve anything, yet he was ruining his future by doing this._

_"...Where will you tell them the money came from?" I asked nervously, afraid that I wasn't allowed to talk. _

_He sat down and shoved my foot away from him._

_"The lottery, of course." I didn't think that would be the best idea, but it was none of my business. I was only a pawn in this horrible game. It wasn't my business what the king did with his winnings._

_He reached out and grabbed the foot he had just pushed away, and held it in his hands, massaging it. It hurt more than it helped, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want to make him mad._

_"You would be such a beautiful girl if you were clean." He mumbled, sticking his dirt-free fingers between my toes. His head suddenly snapped up. He looked into my eyes and said, "Come with me."_

_I did as I was told, and tried to stand up. My legs, however, were too weak, and there was nothing to help myself up with. Once I finally did get myself up on both feet, my knees started to give way. They hadn't supported my body in weeks. His hand found it's way around mine, startling me, and he helped me stand up. He led me out of the small room I was in, and to the foot of the stairs. I knew I wouldn't be able to get up them, and he seemed to know that too. He looked at me for a moment, and then I was horizontal, with one arm under my knees, and the other under my neck. He carried me up the stairs, and it wasn't the smoothest ride. The fact that I was sure he was bringing me to my death didn't help me feel any better. __I didn't want to say anything, because I knew it would only make it happen sooner, and even though I was in pain, I knew the pain of death would be worse. Besides, I was a survivor. My mother had told me that, right before she'd died, and I'd always believed it. Even if it never had been, right now it was true. I was going to get through this. I'd find a way out._

_I didn't pay much attention to where he was taking me. I knew I was in a house, I'd spotted a couch, and I was pretty sure he'd taken me pasta kitchen. It seemed like a nice house, from what I could tell from it's ceiling. Next thing I knew, I was in a bathroom. It was a bright, clean bathroom, but that didn't matter. I was going to die in a bathroom. People died in bathrooms all the time. The Black Dahlia, the guy from The Ring, countless victims of the fictional killers on CSI; They had all died in bathrooms. I would just be another one._

_He set me down on the toilet seat lid. The sink was placed in a cabinet right next to the toilet, and I rested my head on the hard, shiny, gray, marble countertop, as he turned on the bath tub. I listened to the water escape from the faucet, while I felt my head throb more than usual. The water in the tub probably wished that it was back in the pipes now. I would if I were the water. If I were the water, I would just evaporate and fall from a rain cloud back home._

_He turned the water off, and turned to me. He told me to sit up straight, so I tried to. I couldn't keep myself up, so he roughly held me up with one hand, while he used the other to remove my shirt. I had to stand up for him to remove my skirt, which was difficult, even with shoulder under my arm, holding me up, and his idle arm around my now bare waist._

_Once I was completely undressed, and ready for my own death, too weak to fight it off, he lifted me up and set me in the warm water filling the bath tub. It felt good in places, but everywhere that I was cut, it burned. He let me sit in the water for a moment, the anticipation killing me. Next, he leaned across the tub, and grabbed a bar of soap. I didn't get it. If he was going to kill me, wouldn't he wash me afterwards?_

_He dipped the bar in the water, and rubbed it between his hands, lathering it. I stared at him while he did this, wondering what he was planning on doing. I found out, when he started rubbing all of the dirt off of my body. He was giving me a bath, and that was it. _

_His hands rubbed every ounce of dirt off of me. It hurt, when he rubbed it from my cuts, and I was very uncomfortable with him touching me. He'd touched me in worse places before, but I'd been expecting that. Now, he was just washing me. But for what?_

_He found a bottle of shampoo, and, for what seemed like forever, worked it through my extremely tangled hair. Using a large yellow cup, he used clean water from the faucet to wash the shampoo from my hair. Then he did the same with the conditioner. Once he had it in my hair, he sat down on the floor next to the tub, relieving the knees he'd been sitting on, and started rubbing my back._

_"Why are you scared?" He asked me casually, seeing the frightened look on my face._

_"I'm waiting for you to kill me." I answered, my voice shaking._

_"I'm not going to kill you." He assured me. I gave him a sceptical look, and he added, "As long as you cooperate."_

_I wanted to ask him what he planned on doing with me once he was done, but he decided it was time to wash the conditioner out of my hair, and started doing that._

_Once he was done, he grabbed a towel off of a shiny metal towel rack hanging on the wall next to the the bath tub, and wrapped it around me. He rang out my hair, over the sink, and used his fingers to comb through it, before he asked me_

_"Do you want to take a nap?" I only stared at him, not sure what I should say, or what he really meant by "nap."_

_"I'll take that as a yes." He said, before he helped me into a bedroom, and lifted my fragile body up, onto the bed. He gently - an adverb that usually didn't apply to him - pulled the sheets up over me, and said,_

_"Now we'll see how you feel."_

I hate the clock because I like it. I hate the clock because of where it is. I hate the clock, because it hangs across from the bed of somebody I should hate with all my being, but don't.


	2. Chapter 2

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**_GAH! ANOTHER CHAPTER!! FREAK OUT EVERYBODY! I think I'm the one that's doing the freaking out, but oh well. I have an excuse, so haha._**

**_I dedicate this chapter to my twinny Lani, cause she's just awesome like that. (You're jealous of her, admit it) Plus, she kinda threatened me if I didn't update this soon...WELCOME BACK!_**

The rest of the story will be dedicated to all of the rest of you awesomely amazing people, so smile!

**_Anyway, here we go. (Is there a need for a disclaimer? You know by now, right?)

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I can't sleep. I can't sleep for a number of reasons, four of them being:

A) It's too dark. The curtains on the windows are as thick as the crust of the Earth, and I can't see _anything.  
_  
B) My mind. I can't shut it off. I keep imagining my own sure-to-be grisly death, and I can't drift off because of it.

C) The noise is unbearable. There's, of course, the clock; There is some strange growling sound coming from the other side of the window. It sounds like a lawnmower to me. Whatever it is, it's been keeping me awake for several long, absolutely dreadful hours. I can't sleep with noise. I've never been able to.

and then there's D) I can't quit wondering what he's doing out there. I'm partly afraid to close my eyes, in fear of what he might do while I'm sleeping.

I laid in his bed, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a shirt that I recognized as the after-concert ones I must have arrived here in, only much cleaner, in absolute silence for hours, before he came back in. I stared at the ceiling, fighting with my brain about whether or not I should leave the room or not during those uncounted hours. One part told me that I should. What was the point in trying to sleep when all it did was make me think more, and feel even worse about the situation? But then the other part told me not to leave the room. He'd come and get me when I was allowed out.

I listened to the second voice in my head, and lay there, light, hardly noticeable tears coming from my eyes, as I stared upwards. It seemed like years, eons, ages, light years.

I had almost given up on ever leaving the room when he came in, a bowl of cereal in his rough hands. He climbed up onto the bed next to me without spilling or even looking at me, and crossed his legs. He set the bowl on his lap and looked up at me, a strange, completely calm, expression on his face. He told me to sit up, so I did. Resting my back against the headboard, I could see in the bowl. It was full of plain Cheerios, with no milk. I hated Cheerios, but my stomach had been growling for what seemed like forever, so it was all I could do not to snatch the bowl from his hands and down the entire thing in one bite.

"Open your mouth." He ordered. I did, and he took one Cheerio and tossed it in.

"Chew."

I swallowed without chewing, and he told me to open my mouth again. He popped them in, one at a time, so slowly that I thought I was never going to be full. It seemed like it took forever for him to feed me all of them.

I felt like a fish, or a duck at the zoo. He was tossing food at me, and enjoying watching me eat it like I was never going to get another meal. I wish I was a fish or a duck. Then I could swim away, and hopefully, be eaten by a shark. Then it'd all be over, and I wouldn't have to worry about it any longer.

I owed surviving to my family though. I couldn't be the tiny little fish. I couldn't just swim away from this and off myself. I had to get through it.

What if I didn't want to? What if I wanted to die? _Why _did I keep telling myself I'd never get away? If it weren't true…I'd stop telling myself that, but…it _was _true. I wasn't getting out of here. He wasn't going to let me out.

I'd been here for at least two, maybe three, months, and nobody had gotten even _close _to finding me. He hadn't worried about anybody finding me, which meant that, if they were looking for me at all, they were looking somewhere far away from here. They couldn't be anywhere near finding me if he was so calm. The phone calls he received so often no longer upset him, and that meant something.

What if they weren't looking for me? Maybe I wasn't important enough. Hannah was important, Miley was not. Maybe Hannah had been more important to my family too…maybe they'd just go find some other girl, shove a wig on her head, and call her me.

They couldn't be looking for me. I wouldn't still be here if they were. I was not important. I was not a high priority. Finding me was probably between "Meet Elvis" and "Clean Garage" on my dad's ever-extending To Do list.

I wasn't important, I wasn't important, I wasn't important. I _am not _important, I _am not _important, I _am not _important. I _am not_…

"Do you want anything else?" He asked me. I looked up at him, shocked that he was acting like a caring person, when the bruises all over my body proved that he wasn't.

"I can make you a sandwich, do you think you could eat it?" He asked me, staring right into my eyes. His were a beautiful, darker, shade of blue, with a green ring around the outer edge of the Iris. They were so clear, when everything else was so…cloudy. I stared into my captor's eyes for a minute, trying to remember what he'd asked me.

"Miley? Did you hear me?" He asked me, blinking. I quit staring at his eyes, and swallowed the saliva building up in my throat.

"Umm…Yes, yes I can eat it." I rasped, surprised by how hoarse my voice was. I couldn't remember talking above a whisper in a _long _time, and this was probably why.

"I'll get you something to drink too, is milk okay?" He asked, climbing off the bed. I only shook my head yes this time, the second his hand reached the doorknob.

Once he was gone, I realized how much pain I was in. Every inch of my body ached, and I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before. This was a kind of pain that could not be ignored, but it had been. My mind had been so clouded over that I hadn't been able to feel every particle of me begging to die. My throat burned, my stomach was so agitated I felt like I'd puke any minute. My skin itched and blazed like crazy, my head felt like it was being squeezed like a lemon, my muscles felt like they were ripping themselves away from my bones, and the bones themselves felt like they'd been torn from my body, broken into pieces, and glued back together, like a jig-saw puzzle.

I wanted to cry so badly, but my tear ducts refused to let anything out now. They hurt, like everything else.

I had almost passed out by the time he returned with a turkey sandwich. I hated turkey, but that was the _last _thing on my mind at the moment.

"I brought these, in case you needed them." He told me, holding up two cylindrical red and white pills.

My eyelids drooped as he climbed onto the mattress again and set the plate on my dying lap.

He only sat there, waiting for me to eat the sandwich, when I couldn't. I couldn't move my arms at all, I was so afraid of how bad it would hurt if I even tried.

"Here." He whispered, impatiently, as he stuck one of the pills in my mouth. He handed me the glass of milk, and I lifted my weak arm to hold it to my mouth. I could barely swallow the pill; My throat was so swollen it wouldn't go down. I dreaded taking the next one, but if it would help make the pain stop, I was going to take it anyway.

I swallowed the second one with just as much difficulty, if not more, as the first one. The milk alone didn't want to go down, and paired with the little pills, it was nearly impossible. I wondered how I'd eaten those Cheerios. Maybe he'd known something, feeding me those one by one.

I eyed the sandwich, wondering if I actually _could _eat it. He saw me looking at it, and picked it up. He started breaking it into tiny pieces, watching me, instead of what he was doing, the whole time.

He stared at me with an emotion in his eyes that I didn't recognize. It wasn't anger, or impatience, or anything like that. It was some kind of emotion that I hadn't seen in a long time, one I couldn't remember...

Once he was finished, he pushed the plate towards me, and rested his hands in his lap, while he watched me eat tiny piece after tiny piece. It took a long time, but eventually I swallowed every piece of the sandwich. My stomach still felt like it was detached, on a ship away at sea during a hurricane, but at least it wasn't rumbling like it had been.

He reached across me and grabbed the glass of milk from the table, and handed it to me. I drank the entire thing at once, which turned out to be a big mistake. The second he took the glass back, my stomach refused to take anything else. I was going to throw up.

I held my hand to my dry, cracked, lips, trying to keep anything from coming out of my mouth, and sat up further. I could feel his hand on my back, and I could hear his words in my ears.

"Are you okay?" I shook my head no, and he scooped me up and took me to the kitchen.

I lost my lunch in the kitchen sink, with him holding my hair back, and dry heaved for several minutes, before my paining stomach decided there was nothing left.

"We'll have to start with something smaller then." He said quietly, letting go of my hair, so that he could rub my back.

I held myself up with the counter for a minute, as my stomach calmed down, while he gently massaged my back. I didn't think I was going to throw up any more, but I also didn't think I could stand up.

I couldn't really remember the meals I had gotten when I'd lived in the basement, but I knew they were nothing like the one he'd given me today. I didn't quite get why he was letting me stay up here. In fact, I was fairly certain I'd be back in the basement by the next day.

He let me sit there for a moment, before he helped me up, and led me to the couch. I was surprised my weak legs had allowed me to use them as much as I had today, when I thought about how much moving around I'd done up here, compared to the tiny amount of it I'd been able to do when I was confined to that tiny room in the basement.

I laid down on the couch, and he sat in a recliner across from me. The couch was extremely soft, and covered in what felt like leather. It felt so good on every inch of my aching body that it came in contact with, and I almost fell asleep, finally comfortable, for the first time in what seemed like forever.

I could tell the pain killers he'd given me were starting to work. I was still hurting, but not as much as I had been before.

"What's your name?" I asked him. I was surprised by the words that had shot out of my mouth. I hadn't even been thinking them. It seemed like somebody else had said them.

He was quiet for a moment, before he smirked at me and said, softly,

"You can call me Z."

"That's not your real name." My uncontrollable mouth betrayed me, joining the side of my brain that was telling me to be mad, made me say again. He smiled a wide smile and said,

"Miley's not _your _real name, but it's what you prefer to be called, so that's what I call you. Can you not respect me the way I respect you?"

"Ha. Respect me? _Please._" My adulterous mouth spat. The corners of his eyes wrinkled, and his eyes finally matched the smile on his face.

"You know what I mean."

I closed my eyes and laid there for a moment, before my brave, disloyal, mouth asked another question.

"How old are you?"

"I'll be 21 next month." He told me.

"Is that true?" I asked.

"It is. I promise you."

Neither of us said a word for what seemed like forever. He sat quietly in his chair, while I laid on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

"The money…that's not the only reason you took me…is it?" I asked, breaking the long, stretched out silence.

"It's most of the reason."

"What's the rest?" I asked him.

He didn't say anything, he only stood up and disappeared down the hall. I continued to rest, sinking further into the spongy, comfortable leather couch.

Something about this didn't make sense. I wasn't so sure he was telling the truth about why he had me here. He couldn't be in need of any money, if he had a house this nice. The living room furniture alone had to cost a fortune. I wanted to know why he really had me here, but I had a feeling our questioning session was over.

My shallow breathing didn't disguise the sound of his voice coming from down the hall. I couldn't quite understand his words, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was angry.

"I'm serious Manda, don't. I can handle it myself." I heard him say, raising his voice. After that, he lowered it and all I could hear was the buzzing sound of his voice from far away.

I went back to staring at the ceiling, spacing out, in order to keep my mind from drifting to more depressing, gruesome thoughts. He came back a while later, his face red with anger, and sat back down in the chair across from me.

"You'll have to go back downstairs for a little while, okay?" He told me, his voice much calmer than his face.

I knew it wouldn't last. Of course I'd end up in the basement again. He _did _say "for a little while" though. That hinted that he would let me come back up. Maybe I'd been confined to the small, moldy room in the basement on somebody else's orders. Maybe this Manda person was behind the whole thing.

"For how long?" I asked him, as I tried to sit up.

"Until she leaves." He clarified, standing up to help me. He picked me up again, something I was beginning to get used to, and carried me back down to the basement. He put me down at the bottom of the stairs and helped me into the room I'd almost forgotten about.

"Miley…" He started.

"Yes?"

"If I…hurt you…any time tonight…I'm sorry." With that, he closed the door and climbed the stairs, his footsteps echoing through the entire basement, as he disappeared back upstairs.

I sat down on the familiar stony floor that had been my bed for who knows how many weeks, and pulled my knees up to my chest, resting my back against the wall. I crossed my arms and rested them on my knees.

_Why did he apologize? He doesn't have to do it if he doesn't want to. _I thought, setting my head on my crossed arms, as it got darker in the tiny room, with it's one small window.

A while later, my legs got tired, and I stretched them out on the ground again. It was so boring down here, waiting for something to happen, but at the same time hoping nothing does.

Suddenly, light shown through the window, crawling along the wall across from it for a moment, as it moved past the window. Headlights. I heard a door slam right outside, and tried to think of who it could be. As far as I knew, he and I were the only ones who knew I was here. Maybe this was who he'd been talking to on the phone. Maybe she knew I was here, maybe she was responsible for it.

It was silent again for a couple of minutes, until I heard yelling.

"She was supposed to lose it! We can't have it! If you're not doing your job, I'll have to do it for you, and I won't be nearly as gentle!" A woman's voice echoed through the house. I wasn't sure what exactly she was talking about. I was supposed to lose _what?_

I sat completely still, making sure not to make a sound while they argued over somebody I'm assuming is me, but they lowered their voices slightly, and I couldn't hear them.

"I'M NOT GOING TO DO IT AND THAT'S THAT!" Z yelled at the woman, surprising me by the intensity of his voice.

"THEN_ I_ WILL!" She screamed back. I could hear her footsteps coming closer to me.

"NO!" He yelled, his voice hurting my ears with it's deafening volume.

"Don't be so loud! She can hear you!" The woman scolded, not realizing how true her words were.

"Why do you care if she loses it or not?" She then asked, her voice still carrying. I couldn't hear his voice after that. I wasn't even sure if he'd replied to her.

I waited in complete agony, the anticipation killing me, as I waited for something to happen. Nothing did for a while though, so I relaxed, and closed my eyes, resting my tired eyelids. I was _so _tired that I almost fell asleep sitting down there. I probably would have, if the fighting hadn't started up again.

"I refuse to hurt her anymore Amanda! I don't want to be a killer!" I heard Z yell at the woman. I wondered who exactly Amanda was, and how he knew her, while I waited for her to reply.

"You don't have to kill _her._" She finally said, emphasizing the word "her" for some reason unknown to me.

My stomach churned as the volume of their voices decreased, and I could no longer hear them. I sat on the floor, feeling nauseous for what seemed like forever, until a thunderous, incoherent scream sounded off through the house, and the basement door was flung open.

"Manda, stop! Please! You don't have to do this!" Z yelled, his voice much louder now.

I closed my eyes and blocked out their voices as I thought to myself.

_He won't let her kill me, he won't let her kill me, he won't let her kill me, Z will stop her. She's not going to kill me. I'll live through-_

I was immediately jerked from my thoughts when the door to the room I was in was flung open, and a tall blonde woman with too-high eyebrows, that left an expression of perpetual astonishment on her face, came into the room. I say came, but it was more like she flew in.

Next thing I knew, she was attacking me. Her feet wouldn't quit kicking me, and when they did, then she had her hands around my neck.

"YOU-LITTLE-WHORE!" She managed to get out, as she choked me.

"Manda stop! Please!" Z yelled while she murdered me. Nothing he did stopped her though, and she continued strangling me. He tried to pull her off, but she was much stronger than she looked, and he couldn't get her away.

As my air supply dwindled, and everything started going dark, I noticed her eyes, and how familiar they looked. Blue, with green around the edges. Just like Z.

Just as I went unconscious, I heard a loud BANG, and her hands loosened.

When I woke up, I was in a car. It was dark outside, and all I could see out the window was black. There were a couple of even darker shapes, that I assumed were trees, but they zoomed by so fast I couldn't tell.

"Z?" I muttered, my voice so hoarse I couldn't hear it over my own breathing and the sound of the engine.

"Here." He said, reaching over his seat to hand me a water bottle. I wrapped my sore fingers around the cool bottle, and lay there, on the back seat, for a minute, enjoying the relief it gave at least part of my body, before I took a drink.

The water passed through my dry, cracked lips, and it felt good. I had nearly the entire bottle gone before I quit drinking it. It was then that I noticed the car was slowing down.

Z pulled over to the side of the highway, stopped the car, and turned around to face me.

"Here, I'll help you into the front seat." He said, reaching out for me. I had so many questions, but I couldn't ask them when I couldn't see him, so I grabbed his hand and stood up. He placed his other hand on my back, and helped me climb over the console, and into the passenger seat next to him.

"Banana?" He asked, nonchalantly, holding one up. I took it from him, but didn't try to peel it, as he started the car again, and pulled back onto the highway. The speedometer raced up to 65, when the first sign I saw clearly stated that the limit was 55.

"Who was that lady?" I asked him, quietly.

"That was Amanda…my…sister." He told me, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he admitted that.

"Why did she want to…why did she try to kill me?" I asked nervously.

"It's a long story, Miley." He replied, excusing himself from the subject.

"Where are we going?"

"Far, far away."

"Then we have a lot of time. Tell me." He sighed, and started explaining to me.

"...Amanda has always been a very controlling person. We never really got along when we were kids, but eventually, she got married and moved out. My parents thought it was great, but the marriage fell apart after only a couple of weeks. She wanted to hide it from my parents, so she moved out, but they didn't get a divorce. He's a well-known surgeon, Dr. Falmer is," I recognized the name. "And people think very highly of him, so she…blackmailed him, to keep him from divorcing her. They stayed together that way for a couple of years, but then he grew tired of it, and divorced her anyway, and he took everything. The courts don't approve of blackmail, so the second he mentioned it…she knew she wasn't getting anything." He reached over to the knob on the radio, and turned it off, before continuing.

"Well, she started stalking him, going to the hospital to watch him. That's when…well, it was a little over two years ago. A girl came in for a simple surgery that was supposed to be performed by one of the other doctors…and, she thought it was pretty strange how upset this girl was over the possibility that she wouldn't be able to…sing again…"

He was talking about me. I knew I hadn't been secretive enough. It must've been so easy to figure out who I was. I suddenly felt so stupid.

"and so she looked into it, and she found out…who the girl really was…Hannah Montana." He finished.

"But that doesn't explain why she-"

"After losing everything, she hasn't been quite as…mentally stable, as she used to be. She thought that by…kidnapping you…and holding you for ransom…well, she thought it would work."

We sat in silence for a while, before I asked one more question.

"Then why are you helping her?" He looked at me in the dark as we sped down the highway, and explained,

"Truth be told, I'm afraid of her. As a child…I was pretty small, for my age. I got made fun of a lot, and my self esteem isn't exactly high, because of it. Being a failure doesn't help that. And so she roped me into it somehow. I really wish I would've stood up for myself sooner. I'm sorry all this is happening to you." He sounded sincere when he said it. He really meant he was sorry.

"Z…what was she talking about…when she said I was supposed to…lose it?"

"Another time, Miley. Go to sleep." He answered, simply.

I can't sleep. I can't sleep because his words, and the wonder they cause in my brain won't let me. I can't sleep because he won't let me, and I am his.

* * *

**_HOLY- Wow. That is long. That is like, the longest chapter I've ever written I think. That's like, at least a whole thousand words more than usual. I am amazed._**

**_You better be happy with this Lani! It took me forever! Well, actually it didn't...which is surprising...I should probably go back through this and like, redo it...it can't be that great. All the same I know you'll appreciate it. ALL of you people. Because it's long. And...informational and stuff..._**

**_Well, by the time I write the next chapter, I should have my new computer, which means that I'll be happy, which means that I'll want to write, WHICH MEANS, that the next chapter SHOULD be pretty good. Cross your fingers people!_**

**_Read & Review people! _**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Well...it took me MUCH longer than I expected...I got my computer nearly a month ago...and I have only now started this chapter. I apologize. I know I said the rest of this story was dedicated to everybody that reads it...but I lied. This chapter is dedicated to Jen (SVUlover) for her birthday (August 14th). Happy Birthday Jen! I bet this is late...So happy belated birthday, if it is.**_** :D**

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There must be something wrong with me. Why else would I forgive somebody who had done such horrible things to me? Why am I able to sit in his car, completely calm, after the things he's said and done? Because I'm screwed up, that's why. I am a disaster. A freak. A nutcase.

A lunatic, I am.

I stared out the window of his car, listening to the muffled roar of the engine, and the sound of little pebbles getting tossed up by the rapidly rotating tires. There was rap music coming from the radio, but I could barely hear that, so I didn't count it.

There was nothing to do in the car. I was partially afraid to say anything to Z. After all, I was supposed to be asleep. However, if I didn't talk to him, I would waste away in this uncomfortable leather seat, until I died of boredom.

I don't know what I was doing, keeping my mind off of how much pain I undoubtedly was in, nut it was surely working. I knew the pain was there. It had to be. I just couldn't feel it.

So I sat there, wringing my hands, staring at the floor, spacing out. I knew I should be in a lot of pain, at the moment, what with all the injuries I knew I had, and how _smooth _this ride was, but by now, I was either growing immune to the pain, or my injuries were healing.

Z drove for several minutes without saying anything. I didn't want to initiate the conversation, so I stayed quiet, and switched back and forth between staring inattentively out the window and fixing my eyes on the carpet under my feet.

As he drove in silence, I noticed the sky lightening. That meant it was almost morning. The clock was of no help, because it only told me what station the radio was on, and I was of no mind to touch any of the buttons without his permission. I stared and stared out the window, bored out of my mind, until his voice startled me. I jumped in my seat, and hit my elbow on the door. _There's the pain._

"Are you okay?" He asked me, keeping his eyes on the road.

"Yeah." I mumbled. He glanced at me and then back to the road.

"Do you want to get a room somewhere? You would probably be more comfortable in a bed." He had a look on his face that there was effort involved in being so nice to me.

"I can't sleep." I answered simply, before turning to look back out the window.

He was silent again, for at least an hour. The sun was well on it's way up before he said anything again, and when he _did _say something, it was only because of what he saw up the road.

"Shit. A toll booth." I wasn't so sure what he was freaking out about, the toll wasn't _that _much, and he had to have at least three dollars worth of change in the cup holder. When we were about ten yards from the booth, he used one hand to remove his jacket, and kept the other on the wheel, while handing me the jacket.

"What's this for?" I asked him, as he slowed the car down and came to a stop behind a red mini van and a small white truck.

"Put it on, Miley." He demanded, his voice slightly less friendly. I did as he said, and, while pushing my left arm through the sleeve, I glanced at the side view mirror and saw why exactly he wanted me to cover up. My arms looked like somebody had tried to splatter paint them with yellow and purple paint. I had a particularly large, almost black one on my elbow, a place I'd been drug around by many, many times, but the rest appeared to be healing, at least slightly. I'd never been the kind of person that heals fast. I was more an easily-bruised kind of person, which didn't suit the situation I was in very well at all.

Staring into the mirror, I noticed that the bruises on my arms were nowhere near as noticeable as the one on my face. I had a bruised eye so big that it covered my cheekbone, and arched over my eyebrow. nearly half of my face was a sickening yellow color. Once I had Z's too-big jacket on, I pulled the hood up to cover as much of my face as possible, and stared out the window, away from the toll booth operator.

They say that seeing is believing. Well, seeing is feeling too. Once I'd seen my bruises, each and every one of them started to throb. I was in way too much pain by the time we got past the toll booth to bother even _trying_ to take off Z's sweatshirt. He didn't seem to care though. It was pretty warm inside the car, and he wouldn't need it. I, however, just had to sweat even closer to death in the passenger seat.

After a while, Z rolled down the windows a little, as he turned off of the interstate and onto some less busy roads. As we came into whatever town we were in now, we hit several bumps in the road, and I flinched at each and every one of them. Z seemed to notice, because he offered to stop at the next gas station and see if he could get me some pain killer. The closest gas station didn't turn out to be that close though, because he drove for several minutes before he found one.

I just sat in my seat, staring outside, thinking. Maybe I wouldn't be in so much pain if he'd just bring me home. If I could lay peacefully on my own bed. Why _wasn't _he bringing me home? We were headed in the complete opposite direction, I could tell. Everything was getting greener. The sand and landscaping rocks were getting replaced with grass and flowers and shrubs, things you didn't see this much of when you lived as close to the ocean as I did.

I didn't understand why he was taking me this far from my house. If he was really as sorry about what had happened to me as he said he was, he wouldn't be taking me away.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked him timidly.

"Far away." Was his reply.

"Where though? Why can't you just take me home?"

"You don't need to know, Miley. Shut up." He said softly as he pulled into the parking lot of a gas station. He silenced the engine and got out without saying a word, leaving me alone in the car.

He obviously didn't expect me to go anywhere. Maybe I should. But where would I go? Anywhere would be better than this car. Every bump in the road hurt, and if I were to leave, at least I'd know where I was going. I'd be in charge of myself.

I tried to figure out where I would go, if I ran. There weren't very many people outside at the moment.

I reached for the radio and pressed in the volume dial. 5:43 flashed on the screen for a second, before it faded back to black. It was too early for most people to be out. Nobody would see me. I could do it. I could get away.

By the time I had decided to run, I had little time left. Z was already at the counter, and the cashier was ringing up the things in his hands. He glanced out the window at me, and the second he turned back, I opened the door and bolted.

I'd underestimated the pain in my legs greatly. Every step I felt like my bones were shattering, and I expected I would eventually break into pieces on the side of the road. This hadn't been my best idea. There was a bus right ahead though, I could see it. It was maybe 40 yards down the road, I could make it.

That was when I heard him calling my name. More like screaming. He was lucky it was early morning, and there weren't any commuters out yet. He called my name at the top of his lungs over and over, but I kept running, faster and faster. My legs felt like they were dying, but I could do it. I was halfway there, I could make it.

Barely 3 feet from the bus, my head snapped backwards and I was pulled to the ground. A searing pain in my scalp told me I had been caught, by my hair. I wished then that I would have cut it long ago.

"What do you think you're doing?" Z hissed. I couldn't say anything, I was nearly blinded by the pain in my legs and my chest, overpowering the nearly equal aching in my scalp and my back.

I didn't say anything, and neither did he, until the bus driver opened the door and shouted,

"Hey! What's going on out there? Are you getting on or not?"

I could barely understand Z as he replied, politely,

"No thank you sir, we have a ride already."

I knew I'd get punished for this. It had been a horrible idea. I should have just stayed in the car. I'd be safer in a car with my kidnapper than on a bus running from him. I'd been so, so stupid.

Z grabbed a hold of my wrist and yanked me to my feet. I could barely stand anymore, but he didn't seem to care as he drug me back to the car. He shoved me into my seat, and slammed the door I'd left open, shut, before circling the car and getting in on the driver's side, watching me the whole time. I wasn't stupid enough to do it again, but he watched me carefully, just in case.

I breathed heavily, my unaccustomed heart beating rapidly, not used to exerting itself so much. It was silent in the car, except for my heart and my lungs, keeping up, for several minutes, as he stared at me, his fist clenched and shaking, like he was trying not to hit me. I waited for him to take a swing at me, but he didn't. Instead, he grabbed tightly, painfully, a hold of my shoulders, squeezing them way too hard.

"What did you think you were doing? You can't just run like that!" He yelled at me, his voice kept from the outside world by the confines of his car.

"I...I..." I couldn't talk, I was too scared. This was it. I'd been so stupid. Why had I believed him when he'd acted nice? Why had I thought that he really didn't want me to get hurt? Of course he did. He was a criminal. A liar.

"Are you going to explain, or are you going to just stutter like an idiot? Why did you run, Miley?"

"I...uh...I thought that..." his grip loosened on my shoulders, "maybe if I ran, I could just go home...since you aren't taking me there."

He sighed and let go of me, placing his hands instead on the steering wheel, and resting his forehead against it. Again, he sighed, and then leaned back. He looked at me and said,

"Miley, if I could take you home, I would, but I can't."

"Why not?" I whispered, rubbing my aching scalp.

"You wouldn't be safe there. She'll come after you, and that's the first place she'd look."

"She?" I asked, confused. Then, it hit me. "Amanda, you mean? She's not...I thought you..."

"I didn't _kill_ her, if that's what you're asking. I can't. I hit her with a pipe, she was only unconscious when I took you out to the car."

"So...when she wakes up...she'll be..."

"Looking for you. Yes."

"Oh." Was all I could say while I was fearing hyperventilation. I had somebody after me that would probably kill me when she found me. How reassuring was that?

I kept my breath steady, and once I calmed down, I asked another question.

"So we're running from her?"

"Yes."

Finally, he pulled out a bottle of water and a bottle of Advil. He opened the Advil, shook out two pills, and handed them to me, along with the water bottle. I took each one, one at a time, without looking at him. I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my head, but I didn't turn to face him until I was finished.

"Well then, where are we going?" I asked him, as I shoved the water bottle into the cup holder.

"...When we first left, I just drove away, but while you were still out, I decided on a place I thought she wouldn't look."

"Where are we now?" I asked, looking out the window. The bus was gone, and there was nobody around.

"New Mexico. We're about an hour away from the state line. We'll be in Texas soon." He turned back to the wheel, and started the engine.

"Are we stopping there?" I asked him, as he backed out of the parking spot.

"No. We're going to Arkansas. We have about twelve hours to go, I'd say."

"Oh. Great." Twelve hours in a car? I think I'd rather she find me.

"We'll stop sometime in Oklahoma. Even if you can't sleep, _I _can." He said. "Oh, and...I'm sorry...about...this." He held up his right hand, of which a chunk of my hair was wrapped around. I felt sick to my stomach, and quickly turned to look out the window again.

We sat in silence for a while as I thought about how awkward this felt, talking to him like he hadn't just pulled some of my hair out in an attempt to keep me from running away from him. I didn't even _try _to think about what he'd done before today. That was off limits. Private property.

I kept my mouth shut for several hours as he drove down the interstate. I wasn't so sure what to talk about with a person like this. He confused me greatly.

_Fortunately_ for us, there was road construction or something of the sort ahead, which was holding back tons of traffic. I couldn't see where the line started, it was so far away. The car jerked to a stop every couple minutes, when a car finally moved ahead, and I was starting to get a little carsick. I tried to ignore it, and thought about other things, as I sat in the motionless car, blocking out the sound of Z's impatient cursing.

Z reached for the radio, and turned it off, returning the clock to the screen. It was suddenly extremely quiet, and that was when I realized, sitting there with my mind close to empty, just how tired I was. I tried to remember the last time I had slept for more than an hour, of my own accord, and couldn't remember. I'd just never been calm enough to even feel just how tired I really was.

I wanted to sleep, but in this traffic jam, it wasn't gonna happen, with the car starting and stopping so much. Instead, I sat there, staring out the window, with my hand on my upset stomach, as the car _slowly _inched forward every couple of minutes.

I officially decided that I hate traffic jams when the clock changed to noon and we STILL weren't past the road block. We'd reached the backed up traffic this morning, a little past 9, and now it was noon, and we were still stuck. I looked out the window and finally saw what was holding us up. There were two semi trucks flipped over in the road, and, instead of moving the semis, like they _should _be doing, they were redirecting traffic, a couple cars at a time, into one of the lanes on the interstate heading the other direction, to get them around the large trucks and trailers.

Finally, by about 1, we were directed into the other lane, and could pick up speed once again. I was very relieved once we started going again. I didn't have to listen to Z's complaining anymore, and the car was moving in one continuous motion, which calmed my stomach.

I figured now was as good a time as any to try to sleep, considering how bored I was going to be if I just sat here for hours on end. Much to my surprise, I actually _did _fall asleep. I can only remember struggling for several minutes to find a position comfortable enough that sleep was even a possibility, and then closing my eyes. After that, I don't remember anything.

Next thing I knew, something was shaking me, and somebody was calling my name.

"Miley...Miley, wake up." The voice whispered roughly. I scrunched my nose and rubbed my eyes before peeking.

It was dark outside now, and the sky was pitch black, except for the portion of the sky surrounding a street light a couple feet away. It flooded the part of this parking lot we were in with light, and the millions of insects that danced around it provided the music.

Z was standing over me, both of his hands on either side of my shoulders and his face in mine. Once my eyes were open, thought, he stood back up and said,

"We're at a motel, come on." He held out a hand, and I grabbed it without thinking. I was still out of it, which certainly explained the absence of my reluctance to touch him.

He pulled me to my feet, and shut the car door behind him. I stumbled after him as he led the way to the large...yellow? - I couldn't tell in the darkness - building that was the motel. I tripped over several things that weren't actually there, imagining how drunk I must look to the people passing by on the highway behind us. I could barely walk by myself, and I was completely sober. It was both sad and extremely horrible.

Z stuck the key that was in his hand into the lock on a door marked 43, unlocked it, and pushed it open. It smelled bad inside, like cigarettes, old people, and chocolate syrup all mixed together. I ignored the smell though, and followed Z into the room. I noticed that there was only one bed, but I shouldn't have expected anything else. We were poor, anyway.

The lights flickered on above us when Z flipped the switch, illuminating the exceedingly yellow room we were in. I suspected the yellow came more from smoke than paint, considering how much darker it was in some places, and how bad it smelled.

I had to go to the bathroom extremely bad, which was to be expected, considering I hadn't been in one for many hours. I hadn't exactly eaten or drank very much though, so I suppose it wasn't that surprising that I hadn't gone earlier.

I flipped the light switch on inside, and was surprised to see that the bathroom was actually kind of nice. The walls were a sage green color, the floors a gray stone colored laminate. The shower curtain was a chocolate brown, and was, surprisingly, clean. The sink had a nice counter top, and the cupboard looked relatively new. There was a mirror, but I didn't look in that. I didn't want to see myself just yet.

I sat in the bathroom for several minutes, not wanting to get up, completely engrossed in the saddening comparison of this motel room in Oklahoma to my own bedroom back in Malibu, that was happening in my mind. I hated being here. I wanted to go home so, so badly, but there was no hope. I wasn't going home any time soon. Not with _her _after me.

I finally forced myself to get up and open the door. Perhaps I was a bit too eager to get out of there, because I came around the corner a little too fast, and ran right into the corner of a large wooden wardrobe. A sickening pain erupted in my already extremely sore abdomen, and I sucked in my breath, loudly.

"You okay?" Z asked me, getting up from the small recliner he was sitting in.

"Mmmhmm." I mumbled, taking small, slow steps towards the bed. While I'd been sure that I had cracked ribs, I was pretty sure I had completely broken at least one this time. This showed just how brittle my bones were, if they broke when I ran into stuff. I stuck my hand up my shirt and touched the spot that hurt the most. My sharp intake of breath alerted Z, and he was quickly by my side. I tried to shoo him away, and pulled my legs up onto the bed, which hurt very badly, but he kept standing there.

"I'm fine." I assured him, nearly holding my breath to keep from crying. He didn't believe me, and sat down next to me on the bed. While he stared at me, I could feel just how much pain I was in. My collarbone hurt like nothing I'd ever felt before, my legs felt like there were holding up a thousand pounds, when, in fact, they were holding nothing up, and my entire torso felt as if it had been smashed with a hammer and then glued back together.

I slowly laid down, my breathing completely uneven, and relaxed on the bed. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, which hurt very very much.

"Miley, you're hurt-"

"I wonder why." I interrupted sarcastically, as I tried to sit up again. He looked hurt, but continued anyway.

"You might have broke something, let me check."

"No." I answered right away. "Don't touch me. I'm fine."

"You are not. I'm not going to hurt you again." He stared right into my eyes, and, as much as I wanted to believe he was lying, I couldn't. I gave in, and he reached slowly for me. His hand hovered there for a minute, and then he said,

"This might be easier if you stand up. Do you think you can?"

"Ummm...I can try." I mumbled, scooting for the edge of the bed. He helped me up, and my legs felt as if they'd be able to hold me up. Z pulled my shirt up; He practically had it off, which made me extremely uncomfortable, but I guess there _are_ a lot of bones, and I could've broken any of them. It certainly _felt_ as if my entire upper body had been shattered.

Z took a deep breath, and his fingers gently explored my abdomen. I didn't want to look down and see how disgusting I was down there, it would only make me sick, and I already felt like throwing up.

His fingers lightly touched my chest, feeling my ribs. I flinched when he touched the one that hurt the most, and he looked up at me.

"This might hurt a little." I only stared at him, waiting for the pain, when he was still looking back at me.

"Okay." I mumbled, to get him to stop staring. He pressed down harder, and I felt as if he'd just kicked me. If I'd been able to move at all, I would've punched him, but the pain from my ribs, combined with the pain everywhere else, nearly crippled me. I couldn't move.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, it stopped. He looked up at me and said,

"Nothings out of place. If you broke that rib, it's still where it's supposed to be."

"Okay." I garbled, sitting back down on the bed, not bothering to pull down my shirt. I laid down and closed my eyes, wishing I could fall asleep, and that the pain could just disappear, for even a moment.

I could feel him pull my shirt back down himself, and the movement of the bed on my other side seconds later told me that he had sat down on it. I wanted to get up, but I didn't bother. I just held my eyes shut and tried to relax.

Taking normal sized breaths hurt quite a bit, so I was forced to take smaller ones, which only made my chest hurt, from lack of oxygen. It was nearly impossible to sleep this way. I sat there for what I'm sure were several hours, before I realized I wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. I could hear Z snoring next to me by now, and I was extremely jealous of how easily he could sleep, especially with all that should be on his conscience. I could also feel his arm brushed up against mine, but I didn't really feel like moving it. I was much too lazy and in way too much pain to do much of anything, at the moment.

I opened my eyes eventually, and turned to look at the alarm clock, whose bright red numbers where illuminating my face, making it even harder for me to sleep. 2:23 in the morning. I must have slept a long time in the car. But why was I still tired?

I gave up on sleeping, and painfully pushed myself up, off the bed. Watching out for the wardrobe this time, I headed for the bathroom, and slipped inside. I shut the door quickly, but quietly, and turned on the lights. I found myself staring into the mirror, and I wasn't shocked at all by my appearance. I'd expected my hair to look this crappy, I'd expected to have bags under my eyes, I'd expected to look like I was dying. I certainly felt like I was.

What I knew _would _shock me though, was my stomach. I didn't really want to see how gross it looked, but at the same time, I did. I slowly pulled up the bottom of my shirt, the rough cotton scraping every inch of my sore, itchy skin, and revealed several bruises right away. I swallowed all of the saliva in my mouth, which pained my sore throat, and pulled the shirt up higher, my arms aching from being raised.

Eventually, I ignored the pain and just yanked the shirt over my head. I stared at my upper body, all one giant bruise, and wanted to close my eyes. It looked like some sort of tie die, some kind of art work; Some spots were yellow, some were purple, a few were kind of brown, but they all ran into each other, creating some kind of abstract design. There was hardly an inch of skin colored skin on my entire upper body.

There _must _be something wrong with me. How else could I forgive the person that had turned me into a painting?

* * *

_**I was actually planning on apologizing for how short this was...but it turned out longer than I had suspected...it is still kinda short though...but compared to what I used to write, it's not that bad. So I won't apologize.  
**_

_**So Happy Birthday Jen! And happy August to everybody else!****  
**_

_**Also...I'd like to apologize for how long this chapter took me to write...I have a feeling you'll be hearing that from me a lot though, pretty soon...sorry!**_


	4. Chapter 4

**_Hola! This is NOT a random author's note, there is actually a chapter attached. _**

**_I know I said I wasn't gonna finish anything...but well, I had to try to work on this one, because I don't really know what else I can do for my bestest friend's birthday, and this certainly means a lot, (and I'm sure she knows that) considering the lack of time and motivation I have to do it. I mean, it would probably be easier to send a cake...but I'm not so sure how that'd turn out...But yeah, Happy Birthday Lani! I love you very very much. You're grrrrrrrreat. Like Frosted Flakes._**

* * *

I didn't have a clue where I was when I finally woke up. All I know is that when I fell asleep, it was in a bed in a smelly hotel room, underneath a too warm, itchy comforter, with light shining through the window escaping underneath the ugly curtains.

It was still warm, wherever I was now, but it smelled more like pine trees than smoke, and there was sunlight shining directly into my face, rather than turning the walls an even sicklier yellow color.

I rubbed my sleepy eyes as everything started to clear up. I didn't remember leaving the hotel room, but sure enough, I was in the car again. The windows were rolled up and the air conditioning was turned off, holding the warm Southern air in the vehicle. It was almost silent, except for the sound of the highway slipping away as Z sped down it.

My lips were glued together, my throat hurt, and my stomach was complaining about the lack of food it was receiving, but I ignored it all and asked,

"Where are we?"

"You'll find out soon. We're almost there." He replied, gripping the steering wheel tightly and keeping his eyes on the road.

"Where's _there_?" I asked him, watching the corners of his mouth turn up slightly.

He flipped on his left turning signal and slowed down as we approached the turnoff to a gravel road with nothing but trees for as far as I could see. He turned onto it and drove down the road for about a minute, and then he slowed down again. I didn't see anywhere where he could be turning, but I didn't question him. I'd done my fair share of that already.

When the car slowed to a stop, he put it in park and unbuckled his seat belt. I watched him get out, not so sure as to what he wanted me to do.

Once he headed for the trees, I saw where we were going. There was an overgrown pathway hidden in the shadows, with a rusty gate that looked like it was _supposed _to keep people out, but really wasn't.

Z messed with the lock for a minute, before it fell off. He picked it up, shoved it in his pocket, struggled to open the gate, and came back to the car. I remained quiet as he put the car back in drive and forced the car through the opening and down the pathway.

He stopped the car again to get out and close the gate, putting the lock on the gate, more for looks than to keep anybody out, and climbed back into the car, this time for good.

I know it should've crossed my mind, like it would any other kidnapped person, to climb into the driver's seat and drive away without him, but either I was a horrible kidnapee, or he was such a great kidnapper that I'd been brainwashed into thinking it'd be better to stay put. Whatever it was, I didn't feel like moving, so I sat in my seat trying to ignore my aching body for as long as I could.

Z slowly inched down the overgrown excuse for a road, while I inattentively stared out the window into the never-ending trees. It took me a while to discover that the leaves were no longer moving, and by the time I did that, Z was already out of the car, keys in hand.

The car was stopped in a large clearing now, in front of a small cabin. Well, you couldn't exactly call it a cabin...it was more of a...huge stack of wood, sitting in the middle of a heap of gigantic weeds. There were several more "cabins" even spaced along the gravel pathway, and sadly, the one that stood in front of us was the least deteriorated of all of them.

There was a hole in the roof, and the too-low-for-a-normal-sized-human-to-fit-through door hung on one hinge. The three steps that led to the porch were in a pile on the ground next to Z, and the only window on the front of the small house was missing it's glass.

I opened the door and climbed out of the car, holding myself up using the side-view mirror on my side. I couldn't quit staring at this cabin. It looked horrible, yet I felt that it was important somehow. We wouldn't have come here if not for a reason.

The cabin reminded me of _me_, I figured. It looked like it had been very nice at one point. It has a nice little porch, and it was in a nice area. It has probably been pretty special at one point, until the people that were supposed to protect it had given up on it, and walked away, leaving it out in the open, where it was so easy to just fall apart, while nobody that cared was watching.

"_This_ is there." Z interrupted my thoughts, smirking at me from the opposite side of the car.

"What is it?" I asked, slightly disappointed that _this _was the destination he wouldn't tell me about.

"It's home now." He replied, simply.

The inside of our new home wasn't any better than the outside. If at all possible, it was worse. You couldn't see the floor under all of the dust and leaves, not that it appeared safe enough to stand on anyway. The walls were a disgusting green color that may or may not actually be paint, and there was a horrid smell radiating from the middle of the room, that made my eyes water.

"What do you mean by home?" I asked, my voice cracking. He only turned to me and smiled.

"It was either this or an outhouse on highway 62. I was pretty sure you'd prefer this." He stared at me for a moment, and I didn't say anything. If he thought that attempting to be funny would change how I felt about him, or change how awkward this situation was, or change how much I wanted to go home...If he thought acting like he was my friend would change _anything, _he was dead wrong.

His smile slowly faded from his face, and he announced,

"My best friend Tony went to this camp every summer when we were younger. I figured that it was a place Amanda wouldn't look for you."

I coughed up the dust that had made its way into my lungs, as a response, and turned to go back outside. He of course followed me, but it seemed as if he trusted me a tiny bit more than he had the day before.

I couldn't remember it having been as cold outside as it was at that moment, but then again, I didn't even know what month it was, or where exactly we were. It couldn't be much later than September, I knew it couldn't have been any more than two months since I'd been taken, and memories of the day I'd been...abducted...were becoming very clear in my mind.

Z headed back into the cabin and started looking around. I followed him back in, and found him whispering to himself, completely ignoring me. I merely watched him, keeping to myself, sitting on the floor in the cleanest corner that I could find.

I watched Z make his way to the corner, where there was a giant heap of something obscured by a large dirty sheet. He pulled the sheet off with one hand, and half a dozen bed frames, stacked one on top of the other, in three different rows, were revealed. there were some other things I couldn't see from my spot piled on top of them, which appeared to interest Z greatly.

The silence was broken when, with a loud scraping noise, and a grunt from Z, he yanked a small bed frame from the pile of junk. It crashed to the ground, but surprisingly held together, and he went back to digging through the mound of seemingly useless items piled on top of the other beds. Next, he silently pulled a broom out, and tossed it on top of the bed behind him. He went through the rest of it for a few more minutes, before deciding that it was all junk, and turned to face me.

"I'm going out to get some things we'll need. I'm gonna leave you here, okay? Maybe you can clean the place up a bit?" He told me, stepping closer. He saw the confusion in my eyes, and said,

"Run if you want, I'm not going after you. She will though. You'd be safer here." I coughed up more dust and nodded, and he left, his steps making loud hollow noises on the porch, until they stopped and the car's engine replaced them. Then he drove away, leaving me alone in a unsteady cabin in the middle of nowhere.

He hadn't really needed to warn me of the consequences of leaving. I knew what they were, plus, there was no way I'd be getting anywhere without the car he'd just drove away in. I was stuck here, and any hope I had of living relied on him coming back, and I couldn't be completely sure that he would do that.

I coughed some more, and stood up, to look around. My legs seemed to be ready to hold me up, and only hurt about half as bad as they had the day before. My lungs didn't appear to be as eager to work though, judging by the coughing fit I started having the second I was upright. Getting rid of this dirt was definitely important if I wanted to use my lungs as something other than a vacuum bag.

Ignoring the aching muscles that told me to sit back down, I made my way over to the bed frame Z had pulled from the stack, and grabbed the broom from the top of it. I wrapped my fingers tightly around the dusty handle and turned around, not sure where exactly to start sweeping. It was incredibly filthy, and thinking about both all that I would have to clean up, and all the dirt I'd be sleeping in if I didn't, gave me a headache.

Rubbing my temple with one hand, and holding the dusty broom in the other, I chose to start my cleaning excursion in the far left corner; That way I could sweep everything out the door, and not have to worry about scooping it out.

I had about a third of the floor cleared off before the dust flying through the air really got to me and I had to leave the room. I leaned the broom against the wall and quickly made my way out the door, coughing up nearly as much dust as I had swept.

It was getting kind of chilly outside, but that didn't stop me from looking around this time. I didn't want to go back in the cabin, or to the work that needed to be done inside of it.

This place wasn't actually that bad. Once you got past the decrepit cabins and overgrown pathways, it was actually kind of nice. There was a lake several yards away from our slightly-less-dilapidated-than-the-others shack, and a small beach surrounding it. Surprisingly, from what I could see, there was no poison ivy around our cabin, which was good for me, a self-proclaimed poison ivy magnet. That of course didn't mean there wasn't anywhere in the more dense woods further down, which would no doubt find a way to infect me.

The lake started looking more and more appealing, and I ended up down by the tiny beach, with my bare feet sinking into the cold, wet, sand. There was a large rusty contraptions pushed up against some trees to my left that I suspected had once held canoes. There were none in sight, but there was a small motor boat belly-up in the sand a couple of feet away from it. Several pieces of driftwood and a dead fish littered the sand on the opposite end of the beach, and then there was the spot where I stood, pure and untouched.

I stared down at my feet, slowly turning from a pale peach color to a bruise purple in the cold sand. It was closer to dusk than to dawn here, and it was much much colder than I remembered my home being at this time of the day.

No. I quickly pushed my memories of home away. I didn't need to think about home, I needed to think about now. Not the past, not anything else. It would only drive me insane that much faster.

This was home now.

And home was getting dirtier by the second. I reluctantly slipped my shoes back on and went back to the cabin, to resume sweeping before my protesting body stopped me from moving completely, and I ended up passed out on the floor in a pile of muck.

I hated cleaning so much.

Sweepsweepsweep. All in a pile. There was so much, and my coughing was the only thing keeping the hypnotic sound of the bristles brushing the wooden floor from putting me to sleep.

Brush...brush...brush.

Cough...cough...cough.

_"Did you have fun? I thought it was pretty fun. I've been to **much **better parties than that, of course, but it wasn't so bad, right?" I simply nodded, hoping that my silence would somehow bring Jake Ryan down from the insane sugar high he was on while we left another Hollywood party he'd decided to force me to go to. It was a slightly different experience, going as myself and not as Hannah, but all-in-all it was pretty much the same. Whether I was Hannah Montana or Jake Ryan's girlfriend, I got about an equal amount of attention. I hated it, but I wasn't about to tell him that. At least not now. Who knows what he'd do with that gigantic blow-up golf club in his hands._

_"Am I annoying you?" He asked, after a moment of silence, except for the sound of our feet hitting the pavement._

_"No. I'm just thinking." I told him, being slightly dishonest. Truthfully, he **was **annoying me. He'd been doing that for a while though. However, I really had been thinking. I'd been thinking about the things that could happen to us, walking like this. Sure, Jake's chauffeur was driving slowly down the the road, along with us, but really, how fast could he get out of that car? What if somebody shot at us? What if somebody jumped out of those bushes with a knife? It could happen right? How fast could the guy with Jake's life in his hands save it?_

_Jake had insisted on walking me home from the party, rather than taking the car. He insisted that he needed some fresh air, which I took to mean that he thought my perfume was too strong. I **had** used quite a lot of perfume, but there is no other way to remove Jackson fumes than using half a bottle of the stuff._

_"Oh. Okay...So what'd you think of the entertainment? I don't think they should let Seth touch the mic ever again, but that's just me. Maybe you found it entertaining?" He turned his head to the side, looking at me and waiting for my answer. He was hoping I'd agree with him, I knew Jake thought that I liked Seth. Seth was a loser, simple as that. Jake had nothing to be worried about, when it came to that._

_"It was okay." I replied, watching the sidewalk._

_I wasn't exactly sure why Jake had insisted on walking me home, he didn't exactly seem that interested in me. When I'd said I would walk home, he should've gotten into his chariot and rode off._

_His attempt to keep some sort of conversation going was obvious, but the realization that I didn't care about what he was talking about must've not come to mind yet. So he kept talking, and talking. About stupid things._

_"Shh." I quieted him in the middle of a spiel about how Wisconsin was a stupid state and should be given back to the Russians. (I didn't have the heart to tell him it had never belonged to them)_

_"What?" He asked, obviously annoyed that I'd interrupted him. _

_"Be quiet" I whispered. There it was. The rustling noise I'd been hearing for the past three blocks._

_"What's that?" Jake asked, grabbing my hand, scared. Obviously embarrassed by the girly move he'd made, he squeezed my hand in a more manly way, and then put his arm around me, like he was going to save me from something._

_"Jake Ryan?" A raspy, although excited, voice came from the bushes, where a man had been hiding. Jake screamed. _

_"Jake, calm down, he's not going to kill you, you little baby!" I yelled, trying to pry his face out of my neck. The man had obviously been frightened by Jake's **bravery. **He stood there, the moonlight reflecting from his huge, white, eyes, before he turned around and ran off. Jake, however, couldn't move._

_By then, the cheuffeur, Walt, had gotten out of the car and made it over to the sidewalk. He talked to Jake for a minute, and then started to take him back to the car. Jake stopped and turned back to me._

_"He, uhh, looked like my stalker...I just, uhh...you know..." Jake's stalker was in prison now, so of course, it hadn't been him, but that explanation seemed to help Jake's ego, so I let it go, and watched as Jake started for the car. __He climbed in, closed the door, and then rolled the window down, realizing that I was still out here._

_"You coming?" He asked._

_"No, it's only two more blocks. I'll just walk."_

I hadn't realized just how long it had been since I'd eaten until I had food in my mouth. Z had returned just as the sun had started slipping below the trees, with a McDonald's bag, a trunk full of plants and pillows, a small mattress, and a cardboard box of tools, all, except for the food and the plants, things he'd found at a garage sale and paid for with the dwindling amount of money we had left.

"I hope you like potatoes and cantaloupe, that's all the had left." Z announced, motioning to the unloaded plants he'd bought at the local Walmart.

"It'll be fine." I mumbled, stuffing the cheeseburger he'd bought me into my mouth and enjoying every single particle of it.

I noticed, halfway through my cheeseburger, that Z hadn't even taken his out of the bag, and was staring at me instead.

"What?"

"Nothing." He answered, looking down into his lap, where his hands were.

I went back to eating, and used my index finger to shove the last bit of the burger into my mouth before I started on my fries. I ignored the looks I kept getting from Z and focused on my food instead. I couldn't remember McDonald's fries tasting so good. The idea of disgusting grease didn't haunt me like it usually did when I ate food like this. All I could think of was my stomach filling up again. I knew it probably wouldnt stay down, with my stomach as unused to food as it was by now, but I swallowed each fry without even chewing them. Halfway through the fries, my teeth slowed down, and I quit chewing, once I noticed that Z was _still _staring at me.

"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" I asked him again. I slowly took a small bite of the french fry in between my index finger and thumb, staring at him like he'd been at me.

"Umm...well, you see..." He seemed nervous, which, I'm not going to lie, scared me. How could your kidnapper be nervous? It had been his choice to take you from where you belong, he had no right. He'd seemed so fearless, but right now, there was no other way to describe it, he looked scared shitless. I couldn't lie, I felt the same way, but how could you not be scared when the person that controlled whether you lived or died wasn't even sure of what would happen to **him?**

"What is it? Say it." I whispered, shoving my half-eaten french fry back with the others.

He swallowed nervously and opened his mouth again.

"Do you remember asking me about what Amanda had said at the house...about..."

"Losing it?" I finished. He nodded.

"Well...since we're both kind of hiding from her now...well, it's difficult to live with somebody when you have a conscious like mine...and...I think you need to know..."

"Know what?" I asked calmly, when all I wanted to do was scream at him to hurry up.

"I'm going to tell you what you were supposed to lose..."

"Why aren't you, then?"

"Miley please, give me a moment here. I know you're going to flip out when I tell you and I'm going to hate having nobody to talk to while we're stuck here. Let me enjoy these last couple minutes."

I don't know what was wrong with his brain, but he could never seem to make up his mind. I couldn't tell if he was actually saying that he liked talking to me, or if he was just worried that I'd freak out and murder him or something.

"When you were first...taken, I didn't really want anything more to do with it. It had been Amanda's idea, and she, truth be told, scared me. A lot. So I had to listen to her...but...when she'd tell me to go...beat you...I didn't want to...and I told her that...but...she'd take out her gun and threaten me, and I don't want to die just as much as the next guy, so...when she threatened me, I kind of...did what she said. And once I started, I was so out of it, every time it happened...that I just kind of got caught up in it and did things I regret very very much. There's not a part of the last four months that I don't regret more than anything I've ever done...I want you to know that."

"Can you please just tell me what I was supposed to lose already?" I asked impatiently.

"A baby. And you _did_ lose it!" He snapped, getting it out as quickly as he could.

"Wha-what?" I asked, slowly standing up. I couldn't feel my legs, or any part of my body except for my heart. It couldn't be true...I wasn't...I hadn't been...no. Oh god.

I stumbled away quickly, not able to say anything. My mouth was frozen shut. I hurried towards the lake, tripping over a couple rocks, but continuing to run away from him anyway.

I crashed down on the beach and burst into tears. This couldn't be happening to me. Why was life so screwed up? Why couldn't I be at home right now, happy and untouched? I shouldn't be getting so emotional, I knew nothing about that...thing until I'd lost it. There was no hope anymore.

"Hey!" I heard him calling after me. I ignored him, but he kept calling. His voice was getting louder and louder, telling me that he was coming up behind me.

"Leave me alone." I said quietly, when I could hear him breathing behind me.

"No. I told you the truth, would you rather I had kept it from you?"

I turned around quickly and shouted,

"YES! I WISH YOU WOULD HAVE JUST LEFT ME ALONE. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO TAKE ME? YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HER KILL YOU!" He stood there, not moving at all, until I whispered,

"Asshole." Then, he slapped me. And my mind quit working. I couldn't think anymore. All I could do was stare ahead, with an empty head and a sore heart.

I'm pretty sure he apologized, but I couldn't really tell. I could hear him mumbling, but everything was so muffled, and I really didn't care to listen to what he was saying anymore.

I knew when I was alone though. It suddenly got quiet, when he walked away. The birds were silent, the water was silent. No more birds chirping, no more water splashing onto the small jagged rocks. It was quiet, and I was stuck.

I didn't move for several hours, until I could feel hands in my armpits, lifting me up off the sand. I was led back into the small cabin, different from when I had left it. There wasn't so much dirt on everything, and the mattress from Z's car was now lying on top of the bed frame he'd pulled down earlier. That was where I was taken to.

I found myself lying on a lumpy mattress, in a room quiet except for the breathing of somebody else. I could hear every breathe, coming from his position on the floor to the left of my matress. I turned to the right and closed my eyes, making it even darker.

I didn't have a clue where I was, but I knew I didn't like it.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Okay. So I was not planning on finishing anything left on this account...but I've been feeling pretty reminiscent. I had about a third of this finished, but I didn't work on it for three or four months. And seeing as today (April 4th) is my 3 year fanfiction anniversary...I figured I could finish this chapter and post it. So...enjoy. I'm not too sure you'll get another one, but you never know. Maybe you will. When I say something, I have a tendacy to not stick to it. Ask anybody.**_

_**This chapter is dedicated to you guys, the readers. Thanks for making these 3 years what they were, and thank you so much for putting up with me.**_

Surprise, surprise. Again, here I lay, unable to sleep.

I think I've turned into a vampire. That's the only explanation I can think of that makes any sense out of the small fact that my body is still running. How do you drive a car when it has no gas? How do you watch TV when there's no electricity? I don't know, but I do know that my body is running on two-thirds of a McDonald's cheeseburger, some fries, and approximately two hours of sleep this week.

I don't know how I'm still alive. I'd probably be better off if I wasn't...  
Nobody is looking for me anymore, so I'm doomed to live in a decaying shack for the rest of my life, with somebody whom I hate. He snores too, which makes it _so_ much better.

I don't want to think about him though, or his...letter. To me, there are only 25 letters in the alphabet, now.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY.

No...letter that comes after Y. I can't even think it. It hurts too much.

His snoring is killing me. It sounds like an animal. Maybe there's a monster hiding under my bed, waiting to kill me. I don't need a monster under my bed. I have one next to it.

I started humming, trying to block the noise, but it didn't work very well. I could still hear it, and even worse, it took me the whole song to figure out what exactly it was. I had hummed my way through Best of Both Worlds without knowing what song it was until the last verse.

I guess it makes sense. I have the best of _no _worlds now, why would I remember that song?

I moved on to a different song, one that, thankfully, I knew. One that I hadn't made a ton of money off of.

_Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the...sky._

I could see the sky from where I was. Staring straight up, I realized that I was lying directly below the hole in the roof. If it were to start raining...I was screwed.

Of course my bed would be placed under the hole in the roof. In his mind I didn't deserve the luxury of a ceiling. Did I really? ...It was my own fault that I was here. If I hadn't tried so hard to get what I'd wanted (Jake), then I wouldn't have been at that party that night. If I had just listened to him and got in the car, I wouldn't have been taken. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been Hannah.

Hannah was the root of my problem. Hannah was the root of all evil.

Being Hannah made me think I could have a guy like Jake. It made me understand him, it made him like me. If I hadn't been Hannah...I would've been just another screaming girl when he'd started school. He wouldn't have liked me then.

So my problem stems from Hannah. And since Hannah is me...the problem is me. This is all my fault.

Needless to say, I did not sleep that night. I stared up into the sky until the stars disappeared, and His face replaced them.

He was leaning over me, a frown on his face.

"Get up." He ordered. Something about his voice was different today. It was probably the result of me hating him a thousand times more than I had before. At least that meant he had feelings. If he had just went on like life was perfect, while I was sitting here, rotting from the inside out, this situation would be much worse, not to mention it would intensify my concern for his mental health.

"Why?" I asked, blinking. He had moved, and ray of sunlight that he was no longer blocking had just blinded me.

"JUST GET UP!" He shouted. I nearly fell of the bed, in surprise. I could almost feel the room vibrating, due to the sheer volume of his voice. He hadn't yelled at me like that in a while.

I got out of the bed, like he told me to, and stood, several feet away, watching, while he dragged the small mattress out the door of the shack, and left it on the "porch." When he came back in, he picked up the broom and tossed it out the doorway, without looking at me.

"What are you doing?" I asked, reluctantly. He continued to remove all of our stuff from the cabin, ignoring me completely.

He filled a plastic bag with every little thing that could possibly prove that somebody had been living in here, and tossed it out the front door, without giving me an answer.

"Put it in the car." He ordered. He didn't specify what "it" was, but I assumed he meant all the trash he'd thrown outside. When he grabbed a container of gasoline, I thought nothing, but when I saw the lighter he had just pulled out of his back pocket, I knew I'd better do what he'd told me to do, if I didn't want to burn to a crisp.

The mattress wouldn't fit in the trunk, with everything else back there, so I shoved it into the back seat. I knew that that meant I would be sitting in the front seat, next to him, but it was better to be in an unfortunate seat than in a coffin.

The wind blew the scent of the gasoline past my nose as he hurried out of the cabin, a matchbox in hand. He lit a match, tossed it into the wooden shack, and went straight to the car, not looking back to see if the match had worked. It definitely had worked; my previous home was in flames. It hadn't taken a long time, probably because with the gasoline and the old, dry wood combined, it was practically firewood anyway.

I watched the orange flames eat up the cabin, mesmerized by it, but also greatly disappointed. Just like that, all of the proof that I'd been here was gone. There wouldn't be a hair, a fiber, or a footprint - nothing at all - to help them find me. If there was even the tiniest chance that they were still looking for me.

The engine roared to life behind me, and I snapped out of the trance I was in. I climbed into he passenger seat and slammed the door shut. I dropped my head, letting my hair fall in my face to hide how red my face was getting from trying not to cry. There was no hope at all for me, anymore. If I hadn't known that before, I did now.

Through my hair, I could see the time on the clock. It had to be lying though, because there were only 9 minutes between 9:14 and 9:23. It had been so much longer than that. It felt more like 9 hours than 9 minutes.

He got out of the car at a Dollar General, leaving me alone. I guess he supposed I wouldn't run this time. And he was right. I had no reason to run anymore. What would I be running to? I didn't know where I was, and even if I did, why would they want me back, at home? I was beyond messed up now. They'd be so much better off if I wasn't there.

I allowed myself a couple of tears, while he was in the store. He would probably be able to tell, but my eyes were burning with the agony that came with holding my tears in, and I couldn't keep going that way.

The clock changed to 9:31 before he came out, one small bag, the handles wrapped around his fingers. He climbed into the driver's seat again, and glanced at me, catching me staring. I quickly looked away, but I could see his reflection in the window, and he didn't stop looking at me until he'd started backing out of the parking space.

He drove down the road, looking back and forth, out my window and then his, as we went. He pulled over and parked against the curb, across from a park. There were several rusty swing sets, - most of them missing some swings, with a couple of the remaining swings wrapped around the top of the frame- a couple of slides, and a ton of sand, along with a small building with children painted on its walls. I could see by the sign on the door that it was a bathroom.

He unlocked the doors, got out, and circled to my side, opening my door for me. He grabbed a hold of my arm and pulled me out of the car, painfully. I could almost feel his fingers burning my skin. He didn't let go as he steered me across the park. I could feel the sand in my shoes rubbing my feet, and concentrated on that, rather than on what we could be here for.

He let go of my arm outside of the bathroom, and shoved the Dollar General bag into my hands.

"Don't take too long." He told me. I stared at him, confused. Wasn't he going to tell me what I was supposed to do? He gently shoved me toward the door. I took a deep breath and went inside, standing in front of the only sink in the dark and dreary room, before I opened the bag. Inside, there was a box, and a pair of scissors. A box of hair dye, and a pair of scissors.

I looked up at the door, and saw that he was still standing there, watching me. His eyes urged me to move faster. I looked back at the mirror and almost stopped breathing. I looked hideous. My face was dirty, and my hair was messy, not to mention greasy. I reluctantly reached for the faucet, and turned on the water. The sink was disgusting, and I didn't want to let my hair touch it, but I knew that I had to. I leaned over the sink, trying to fit my head under the faucet. The water pressure was pathetic, so it took a while to get all of my hair wet. I tried to rinse out all of the dirt and grease, but It would still be repulsive, until I got some shampoo. I stood back up and shut off the water, before slipping my fingers into the scissors.

"How...how..." I couldn't bring myself to ask how short he wanted me to cut my hair. I didn't want to cut it all. I'd grown very attached to my hair. It was all I had left.

"To your shoulders, at least." He said quietly. I was grateful that my hair was dripping, as it disguised my tears.

I slowly raised the scissors with my right hand, and held up a strand of my hair with my left. I sliced it off about an inch past my shoulders, hoping that I could get away with it. I wiped my eyes with my now-free left hand, and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He was still watching me, almost studying. I looked back at the mirror, and picked another strand. I cut it off at the same length, and moved on to the next piece.

"Do it faster. Nobody cares what it looks like." He said, impatiently. I tried to hide a sob, and sliced off another strand of hair, faster this time. It took half the time to cut off the rest of my hair as it had taken to hack off the first third of it.

He got up when I was finished, and grabbed the bag off of the sink. He took out the box of hair dye, handed it to me, and proceeded to pick up what had to be a couple pounds of hair off the ground, stuffing it into the bag.

I stared at the box. It was red. He wanted me to dye my hair red.

"Red?" I whispered.

"Yes, red. We can't exactly go blonde, can we?" He said, as he angrily shoved the ruins of my hair into the yellow bag.

I closed my eyes as I opened the box, and pulled everything out. I put the gloves on, although it wouldn't really matter if I stained my hands. I had to wet my hair again, since it had started drying while I had been giving myself a haircut.

I slowly rubbed the hair dye into my much thinner, lighter, hair, with my eyes shut, so that I didn't have to watch. My stomach started hurting as I thought about the thirty minutes I'd have to wait before I could wash it out.

"I'm sorry you have to do this." He told me, when I took off the gloves and dropped them into the garbage can next to the sink. I slowly washed my hands, trying to take as much time as possible.

"Why?" I asked quietly.

"I don't _want _to torture you, Miley."

"Then why are you doing it?"

"I can't get caught." He said solemnly, sitting back down on the dirt-covered floor.

I stared at my face in the mirror. Anything to stop me from looking at him. I'd never thought that I would ever be this ugly. I had never looked like this in my life, and I'd never planned on it. There were huge dark circles under my eyes, and I was terribly pale. I could see the veins in my face through my skin, it was so white.

The minutes slowly ticked by, one by one. He kept looking at his watch impatiently, as I stared at myself in the mirror. I couldn't help but see his reflection, although I was trying to look at everything _but _that.

Tick-tock-tick-tock. It was never going to end. I was going to be stuck in this stupid bathroom forever. Or at least until the kids that used this park - if anybody used it at all- showed up and decided that they needed to use the bathroom. I was going to pray for weak-bladdered children with nothing better to do.

I could feel the dye burning my scalp by the time he finally said,

"You can wash it out now." He was still strangely quiet when he said it.

I wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but I was too afraid to, so I kept silent. I turned on the water as fast as I could, and stuck my head in the sink. I kept my eyes closed, not only because I didn't want to get anything in them, but also because I didn't want to see anything that looked even remotely like blood.

Even with more than half of it gone, my hair was still exceptionally thick, so it took a long time to wash all of the hair dye out. I couldn't tell for sure if I was done or not, as I wasn't willing to open my eyes, but my hair still felt slightly grimy, so I kept going. The longer I could go without looking at myself, - or anybody else - the better.

"That's good enough. Hurry up." He ordered. I rubbed the water out of my eyes and opened them, afraid of what I was going to see. At first I saw nothing, since everything was blurry, but when my vision eventually cleared, I started crying again. It wasn't hideous...it looked as natural red as it could be, - and as natural as I could tell, when it was wet- but it was so different. I had lost everything. My home, my friends, the...thing inside me. Everything I owned, everything I could have done. All of my dreams were gone. All I had left was nightmares, and I wasn't even allowed the sleep those came with. I didn't even look the same. I'd lost it all. And now I'd lost my hair. It was the only thing I had left, and now it was gone.

"Stop crying, Miley. It's just your hair." He said, cold hearted. He didn't understand. How could he tell me to calm down when he couldn't even see why I was upset in the first place? It wasn't like I was overreacting. I had every right in the world to bawl my eyes out.

But I listened to him anyway.

Wiping my eyes, I followed him back out to the car and silently climbed into the passenger's seat. It was cold now. Not because of the weather - it was particularly warm and humid outside, actually - but because of how much less I wanted to sit there this time, if that was possible. It was like it was turning to ice, trying to hold me to it like a child who licks a frozen pole.

Tears dripped silently from my eyes as he drove away from the park, and didn't stop for at least an hour. I didn't bother to check the clock this time, but it felt like ten hours, and I knew my feelings were greatly exaggerated. It was getting dark before he pulled off the interstate we'd been on for what seemed like forever. He pulled into another parking lot, this time a Walmart one, and left me in the car alone again. He locked the doors behind him, and took the keys. I could get out and run, but again, he and I both knew that I wouldn't.

He was inside Walmart for a long time. There were no cars around us, so I had nothing to look at. No way to occupy myself. It started getting hotter in the car, even with the sun disappearing on the horizon. I flipped the visor down, and looked at myself in the small mirror. My face wasn't so dirty anymore, but my hair...It was so bright. Not fake bright, but bright bright. It was so weird to look at. You could tell I'd cut it in a hurry, too. He would have to let me even it out later. He obviously expected people to see me, if he'd made me cut and dye my hair. I couldn't be seen in public with my hair lopsided if I couldn't be seen in public looking like myself.

I could practically hear my hair crackling. I was imagining it, I knew that. Partly because of the heat, partly because of how I looked like my head was on fire, but mostly because of how frizzy and wannabe curly it was. My hair always seemed to curl more when it was longer. I wasn't sure why, but it'd always been that way. It defied gravity. Maybe I was just a freak, but at least I still had that.

In that tiny mirror, I could hardly recognize myself. I looked closely at my face, for the first time, and didn't really recognize it. From a distance, or when I wasn't studying it, it looked like it always had. But up close, it looked freakishly unfamiliar. That was his point, I'm sure. I couldn't be recognized.

I was forced out of my stupor when the locks clicked and the door opened. He sat back in the driver's seat, empty handed. What could he possibly have been in there so long for? I wanted to ask, but I kept quiet. He looked worried. His jaw was set, and his eyebrows were pushed together. He closed his eyes, forced them open again, and turned the key. The engine roared to life, he took a deep breath, and the car leaped out of the parking spot. He glided down the isle, and slowed down as a coal-black Mustang backed out of a parking space between us and the road. The Mustang left the parking lot via the right, and so did we. The Mustang turned left by a vacant movie theater, and so did we. When the Mustang turned right, He did too. It didn't take me long to decide that we were following the person driving it.

"Why are you following that car?" I asked, afraid to talk, but also afraid of finding out the answer a different way.

"Don't worry about it." He told me. His face was sweating. I noticed this as I studied him, hoping that if I stared long enough, he'd tell me what we were doing.

"But-"

"I _said_ don't worry about it!" He yelled, his voice angry. I let it go and stayed silent the rest of the way, staring at the road and nothing else.

Each time the car slowed down, I would look up. It was a stop sign or a stop light the first seven times, but the eighth time it was because the black Mustang had pulled into a driveway. I didn't look at the house, but it took up a large portion of my peripheral vision, so I knew it was big. We passed it and circled the block twice, before he slowed down even more, where the woods circling the house ended. He pulled over into the ditch, partly disguising the car. He climbed out before I could say anything, and disappeared into the trees. I waited in the car for the umpteenth time for the longest amount of time I'd had to wait so far. I was so tired I couldn't even worry that I'd been ditched, so I fell asleep in the passenger's seat. I'm not sure _why, _but it was an actual sleep. It happened right after I closed my eyes, and didn't end until my door was forced open and I was yanked out, into the darkness.

"What the- What are you doing?" I asked, as my equilibrium adjusted. I noticed that we were in a driveway now. I had to have been extremely tired to have slept through the car being moved.

"Just follow me." He whispered. I obeyed and followed him around the house, and into the back. We went inside through a door - hanging off it's hinges - that connected the deck to the house. It was dark inside, except for one light coming from a room across the house from where I was standing.

"Why are we here? Do you know the guy who lives here?" I asked him.

"Umm...you could say that." He mumbled as he looked through some cupboards in the room to my left. It had to be a laundry room. I could see what looked like an ironing board across from the doorway.

I moved toward the lone room in the house that wasn't filled with darkness.

"Don't go in there!" He yelled, all of a sudden. He reached for my arm, but was too late, as the second he grabbed my arm, I tripped over something heavy and immovable sitting on the floor. His one hand around my upper arm couldn't stop momentum, and I tumbled over the object on the floor. The second my hands sent a message to my brain, telling it what I was touching, I started screaming. I could hardly breath, but I wasted the lung capacity I had left to express how freaked out I was.

"Shut up!" He yelled, over and over again. But I couldn't. There was a dead body on the floor. A body of a person. A person he'd just killed.

"SHUT UP! STOP SCREAMING!" He yelled, clamping a hand over my mouth. I bit down on it, hard, and tried to get away, but he flipped on the lights, temporarily blinding me. Before I knew it he'd backed me into a corner.

"You killed him!" I croaked.

"I had to." He said quietly. As my eyes stopped burning I could see the guilt in his face. He looked younger right now than he ever had. How unsure he was of himself was written all over his face.

"No you didn't!" I yelled. "You didn't have to kill him! You didn't have to! Z, you didn't have to!" I yelled, so hysterical that I didn't realize I'd said his name for the first time that day until I stopped hyperventilating.

"I did! I had to! I did it for you!"

"For me? How did you do this for me? Now when the police find the body I'm gonna be a suspect! How is that a good thing?"

"I didn't say it was a good thing!!" He yelled at me. "I had to do it, Miley! I had to. Miley, I had to." He repeated the last part, his voice softening.

"Don't say my name, like you care! Don't talk to me. Just...just go to hell! Go to hell, and leave me the fuck alone!!!" I screamed at him, tears streaming down my face.

It happened so fast that I barely even realized it was happening. All I knew is that I was on the ground, my face stung, and the back of my head hurt the most of all. My tears were still blurring my vision, but I could see him standing over me, still. I weaved my fingers through my hair, trying to find the spot where it hurt. It stung when I touched it, and when I pulled my hand away, it was slightly damp, with a red liquid.

I stared at my hand for a moment, waiting for the world around it to stop spinning. When everything was still, I glanced at the dead body only inches from my feet. The young man on the ground looked an awful lot like the young man standing over me. The unoriginal light bulb symbolizing my mind flickered on.

"You had to do it." I whispered.


	6. VIP

**Hola mis amigos. I'm just here to tell you all that if you enjoyed my Molivers from way back (if you can remember them)...or if you enjoy other peoples molivers now...that's what I'm writing on my other account. The link's in my profile if you would like to check it out. At the moment I only have two Molivers in progress but theres sure to be more eventually.**

I've quit Jiley, i don't like it anymore, blah blah blah. So yeah. Sorry if you thought this was an update...but new stories I actually like writing are more exciting, right?


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